Trump’s torture statement sends dangerous message

President Donald Trump’s recent claim on ABC News that torture “absolutely” works is not just contrary to a plethora of research showing torture is counterproductive, but it also sends a deeply troubling and dangerous message that threatens the safety of our citizens and our brave military overseas, even more so than they are currently threatened.

Although Trump indicated he would defer to his senior advisers, Trump would not say in his ABC News interview that the United States will refrain from using torture: “As far as I’m concerned, we have to fight fire with fire.”

Then on Friday, Trump indicated he still believes torture works, but said he’s giving his Secretary of Defense, James “Mad Dog” Mattis, the power to “override” Trump’s position.

Mattis has stated he does not believe in torture.

During his presidential campaign, Trump said, if elected, he would “bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding.”

Several prominent Republicans denounced Trump’s torture comments this week. House Speaker Paul Ryan said, “Torture is not legal, and we agree with it not being legal.” Senator John McCain, who was tortured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, said, “We are not bringing back torture in the United States of America.”

To Trump’s credit, he does not try to hide his views on torture by using tired, misleading euphemisms like “enhanced interrogation.”

President Donald Trump after his swearing in as president.(Photo: Getty Images)

Waterboarding is torture. Waterboarding involves simulating drowning, during which a person’s mouth and nose is covered and large amounts of water are poured over the person’s face. In 2015, the Senate voted overwhelmingly to limit lawful interrogation tactics to those in the Army Field Manual, which outlaws torture tactics like sexual humiliation, beatings, mock executions, electrical shocks, burning and waterboarding. The law was passed, in large part, as a response to the torture at Abu Ghraib prison.

Former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura, a Navy Seal who was waterboarded in military training, said on CNN in 2009, “it is torture…it’s drowning. It gives you the complete sensation that you are drowning.” Malcolm Nance, former master instructor at the military’s Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) school, has also been waterboarded in training and has waterboarded hundreds of people in training. In 2007, Nance wrote that waterboarding is a “torture technique, without a doubt” and that military training used waterboarding “to show how an evil totalitarian enemy would use torture at the slightest whim.” Nance wrote that waterboarding in training for a “very short period” is much different than “when performed on an unsuspecting prisoner.”

Torture does not work. Even Trump’s own Secretary of Defense James “Mad Dog” Mattis, has informed Trump that torture is ineffective. In his recent ABC News interview, Trump said, “I was a little surprised…(General Mattis is) not a believer in torture.” A 2014 Senate Intelligence Committee report on torture concluded the CIA’s program of brutal interrogations tactics were “deeply flawed” and produced “fabricated” information.

President Donald Trump signs one of five executive orders related to the oil pipeline industry in the oval office of the White House on Tuesday. Watching are (from left) White House chief of staff Reince Pribus, counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway, White House communications director Hope Hicks, senior adviser Jared Kushner and senior counselor Stephen Bannon.(Photo: European Press Agency)

Retired Air Force Colonel Steve Kleinman, a senior adviser to the FBI led terrorism interrogation team, says, “torture immediately undermines a source’s ability to be a reliable reporter of information…”

Iraq and Afghanistan war veteran and former U.S. Army counterintelligence special agent CJ Grisham told CNN, “Anyone who understands interrogation knows that more than 99 percent of interrogations are very successful even without using enhanced techniques” and that “hardcore terrorists aren’t the ones on which torture works on, they’d rather die anyway.”

Our country has treated some of our most horrendous enemies humanely after they were captured. During World War II, Nazi POW camps were scattered across the United States. Hundreds of thousands of Nazi POWs were treated by the United States military and government in accordance with the Geneva Convention. Some Americans in the 1940s became very angry about our largely humane treatment of Nazi POWs, complaining at the time that Nazis were being “coddled” in the POW camps.

Trump’s view on the issue of torture appears to shaped by the brutal atrocities committed by terrorists: “they’re chopping off our heads in the Middle East.” He’s right that the enemy is extraordinarily brutal and must be defeated. But that does not mean it is smart to torture people — nor does it necessitate nor justify the torture of people who are captured, detained and in our custody.

Our country is not perfect. Not all POWs or captured enemy combatants have been treated humanely. Actions by our government, such as the internment of Japanese-American citizens during WWII, must never be repeated.

Even though our country is not perfect, we are an exceptional nation and we must never lower ourselves to the standards of the enemy; not merely because it is immoral and illegal, but also because it is ineffective and counterproductive.